Hops and Dried Flower Displays
What a rewarding job to complete; Flowers were grown and dried this year and arranged alongside hop bines from a local farm (Hop Garden at Kilndown). Locally picked, lovingly made and the smell of these garlands is just sublime; a pungent but pleasing smell, reminiscent of early autumn.
Hops are harvested in September, this is the only month that they are seasonally available and then they are usually used for making beer. There are now very few hop gardens left in Kent, but growing hops used to be very prolific. This can be seen by the number of Oast houses that are now converted into homes. Hops brought into the house or business are meant to give you good luck for the year ahead. This traditional decoration usually put over an inglenook fireplace and also used to decorate pubs.
Since The Curious Eatery (A wonderful local bar/eatery/restaurant in Boughton Monchelsea) are reopening their interior spaces with a new bar area and restaurant upstairs, they invited me to arrange and hang hop bines inside to complete the relaxed bar feel in a truly Kentish style!
The Curious Eatery say: "We can’t wait to welcome you back inside from Sep 19! 🎉 You’re cordially invited to the grand reopening of the Eatery’s interior, complete with a makeover to our relaxed bar area downstairs, while keeping the upstairs space as the classic Curious dining experience you remember 😊 And the best part? We’ll be open on Tuesdays too, so you can join us six days a week! What could be better?"
“Hop plants are perennials, produced from cuttings, and can be expected to remain productive for 10-20 years or more, sending their roots down to a depth of up to 12 feet (3.75 metres). Each year they die back to ground level, with new stems or ‘bines’ re-growing in early April. Healthy bines of appropriate vigour are then selected and trained to begin climbing the support strings (a process known as twiddling), which they do in a clockwise direction. When 2-3 bines are established on each string, all surplus shoots are removed, a job usually completed by the end of May. Hop picking usually starts in early September. Bines of conventional tall hop varieties are severed 3-4 ft above the ground and from the overhead wires. These are then transported in their entirety on trailers to picking sheds where the cones are stripped mechanically from the bines and then separated from the leaf fragments. The cones must then be dried before usage. The water content of fresh picked hops is about 80% by weight and has to be reduced to about 10% to prevent decomposition in storage. Drying is achieved by blowing hot air upwards through a perforated floor on which the hops are stacked. Oast houses were purposely designed for the hop drying process although today most have been converted to desirable residences.”